Controversies & Scandals

NEW YORK: Four leading journalism school deans, along with Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, have penned a strong call for press freedom in the reporting of secrets that the government, and particularly the current administration, wants to keep from the public. "It is the business -- and the responsibility -- of the press to reveal secrets," they declare. It was...

NEW YORK: Jerry Roberts, the former editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press who resigned last week in protest of the owner's alleged meddling in news coverage, said the incident should be a warning to others who see a new wave of private buyers as the saviors for the troubled industry. "There is definitely a downside," Roberts, 57, told E&P late Sunday, just days after he quit the paper he had...

Editor-in-chief of the newspaper Parlamentskaya Gazeta (Parliamentary Newspaper) Pyotr Kotov will be relieved of his duties in connection with the publication of an article that was severely criticized by the leaders of both chambers of the Russian parliament, Itar-Tass news agency reports. “Kotov has already tendered his resignation,” lower house speaker Boris Gryzlov said. Last week, speaker of...

Last month, Bennett Haselton, the founder of Peacefire.org, a Web site that promotes open access on the Internet, got an e-mail message from a Los Angeles Times reporter who was writing an article about online censorship. The reporter was unable, from The Times's newsroom, to access Mr. Haselton's site, which also offers instructions on how to get around software installed to block Web site access...

Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely "the Gulf" in a map published in the latest edition, state television reported Wednesday. It is the second time in two years that Iran has banned such an international publication for failing to use the term "Persian Gulf" in a map. In 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition appeared with the...

"We were wrong!" You almost never see these words on the cover of a major magazine, but on June 5, Newsweek said just that. The magazine headlined, in boxcar type, "20 years ago, Newsweek predicted that a single, 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married." Over a photograph of a bride and groom, the magazine admitted its 1986 story had been incorrect...

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush has apologized for teasing a legally blind reporter about wearing sunglasses during a news conference. The incident happened Wednesday at a Rose Garden media briefing when Bush, who was in high spirits, responded to Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten`s raised hand and asked if Wallsten was going to ask his question 'with...

Guwahati: The Assam Assembly witnessed a walkout by reporters from the Press Reporters' Gallery on the last day of the three-day session over a ruling of the Speaker Tanka Bahadur Rai on the authenticity of newspaper reports. The reporters took strong exception to the ruling of the Speaker, in which, he said, "all newspaper reports are not authentic." Trouble began when Bharatiya Janata Party...

TOLEDO, Ohio -- A newspaper fired a reporter who wrote an anonymous letter to the Pulitzer Prize board critical of the newspaper's entry for its work in uncovering the state's coin investment scandal. George Tanber, a reporter for The Blade for 14 years, was fired Thursday for "displaying a pattern of conduct which was dishonest, inappropriate, or both," the newspaper reported in Sunday's editions...

WALVIS BAY, Namibia (Reuters) - A Namibian judge dismissed charges on Monday against a South African photographer arrested for trespassing while trying to snap a shot of pregnant superstar Angelina Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt. John Liebenberg was taken into custody on Friday afternoon after driving into the back of a police barracks in search of a vantage point to take a photograph of a nearby...